Inbound Call Center Outbound Call Center

Inbound Call Center

In an inbound call center the customer dial in and the agents answer the call. This is called an “incoming” call to agents of the call center. However, technologically, an Automated Call Distribution (ACD) System is used to distribute the incoming call to specific queues in the agent’s terminals for getting service by either of them.

To say it differently, the customer calls a single number and supposing the call center has five agents. Basically the ACD distributes the received calls to the terminals of any of the agents, so that the call gets answered in the last possible time.

Therefore, the inbound call center would be a customer service center and would service calls related to back office operations, credit card operations, banking and finance, and a whole lot of other industries. There, an agent is generally expected to answer around 100 to 120 calls per day.

Customers make inbound calls to contact centers mostly to by something, for example airline tickets, or in order to get some information, like obtain technical advice concerning their purchased or item of interest or to get answers to question about their utility bills, or because of many other reasons.

To a greater extent companies count on inbound call centers to provide a proactive customer service that later can be used for commercial operations such as up-selling and cross-selling.

Different other types of inbound Call Centers are:

• Answering Service Call Center
• Live Dispatch Call Center
• Technical Support Call Center
• Reservation Services Call Center

Outbound Call Center

As for the Outbound Centers, The Company’s employees initiate the calls to the clients. These calls might be to inform a client that the product ordered in now available or because the customer hasn’t paid a bill or to solve a problem the client was having.

In case of the companies send email to their clients, they always use some mass mailing effort, they don’t send emails personally to each customer. Because, most people are inclined to categorize unexpected email as spam, but unexpected phone calls are taken easily.

The probable reasons for outbound calling are:

· Retention Callings

· Tele-Sales

· Customer Surveys

· Payment Collection Callings

· Query Resolution Callings

One needs to keep in mind that the outbound callers need to completely understand the laws of the country they are dialing to. There are some countries who are pretty rigid about the DND (Do Not Disturb) list and the timing when the calling can be done.

Generally Outbound Call Centers are of following types:

• Lead Generation
• Survey Call Center
• Data Mining Call Center
• Sales and Marketing Call Center
• Announcement Services
• Fundraising Call Center
• Appointment Scheduling Call Center

Again facility wise Call Centers could be categorized in another two classes:

1. Hosted Call Center: It means Call Center which dose not has any infrastructure other than Call Center Agents. Generally the infrastructural facility is provided from the Hosted Call Center Service Provider.
2. Hosted Call Center Service Provider: It means service provider who provide the required infrastructure Services to the Hosted Call Center Operator.

Call centers of all types use call blending feature as way to keep employees productive but not overworked, and also to keep customer happy. Call blending is the capability to make outbound calls following inbound calls, all in one easy technologically created system. After making outbound calls, it could be logged out of that function and enter into a separate code to indicate that the station is free to received inbound Calls.

The software for call blending systems works with the concept of a hunt group, taking into consideration that which station are open to receive calls, and which of those stations received the last inbound call. In fact this allows proportionate distribution of inbound calls evenly among the work station in the hunt group. So that, no one employee is overtaxed with calls while other has nothing to do.

Business such as cable and internet providers, credit cards companies, airline and many others often outsource customer service to call centers because their employees usually has less time to spend on extensive customer issue.